‘Revival America’ founder focuses on ‘last great spiritual movement’

Ron and Narvell Grace McGhee are builders. In nearly 50 years of ministry together, God has used them to build up people, churches and ministers.
   
And now having recently retired as pastor and currently serving as pastor emeritus of Calvary Baptist Church, Bay Minette, Ron McGhee — an Alabama Baptist pastor for 47 years — said ministry will simply take a different turn.
   
The pastor, author, evangelist, singer, mentor, husband and father said if his ministry could be characterized by two words, they would be “variety” and “evangelism” — two things McGhee said he plans and hopes to continue.
   
Through the years, his main task has been cultivating churches with low participation or low attendance into healthy, thriving churches, he said. 
   
For instance, while McGhee was assistant pastor at First Baptist Church, Dothan, in the ’70s, the church experienced an outbreak of revival. Teenagers in the church developed a passion for reaching out to other youth, and he taught them how to witness. Youth decisions and church attendance skyrocketed as teenagers began knocking on their friends’ doors and “dragging” them to church, McGhee said.
   
In addition to Dothan, he’s served many other Alabama Baptist churches, including Perdido Beach Church, Elberta; Booneville Church, Atmore; Georgetown Church, Chunchula, near Mobile; Hillcrest Church, Ozark; and First Church, Atmore.
   
And though McGhee devoted his life to God’s work in churches, his responsibilities didn’t end there. 
   
During his early years of ministry, he served as a pastor while attending school at the Baptist Bible Institute (now the Baptist College of Florida) and then attended a Howard College (now Samford University) extension at night. During most of his other pastorates, McGhee served as a bivocational pastor, working secular and additional ministry jobs. 
   
Later on, he also followed various ministry pursuits such as director of missions for Bethlehem Baptist Association, religious columns for The Atmore Advance newspaper and a prison ministry. 
   
McGhee also managed a radio ministry for 22 years — singing, preaching and inviting guests to appear on the show “Revival America.” He has also written two books — “Revival America Now!” and “Jesus and the Multitudes.”
   
He said he believes in multiplying his ministry through evangelism — and he has the numbers to back it up. 
   
His multiplication efforts have resulted in 2,000 people led to Christ and baptized through his ministry. McGhee has preached 120 revivals and Bible conferences over the years and has mentored 17 young men who have gone into the ministry.
   
He has also reproduced God’s work in his own family, singing gospel music with his wife and children on the radio and ordaining his sons-in-law into the ministry. McGhee’s daughter, Rhonda Daniels, is a Christian women’s speaker.
  
He said he’s looking forward to the next phase of his ministry.
   
“Now my goal is to focus more on evangelism,” McGhee said. “I’m just one little voice crying in the wilderness, but I’d like to lead at least 2,000 more people to Christ and mentor a few more pastors. I’m going to try to do something to bring America back to God.”
   
His vision has materialized in the form of the ministry he founded, Revival America.
   
McGhee is available for speaking engagements, and he would like to see the ministry grow enough to hire additional evangelists with the mission of evangelizing America. “God is on the move,” he said. “I feel as though in the next few years, there will be a revival across America — one last great spiritual movement in this country.”
   
To contact McGhee, visit the Revival America Web site at www.revivalamericanow.com or e-mail revivalofamerica@yahoo.com.